Statement by Kate Gilmore, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Side event on the Results of the Regional Meeting of the Latin America and the Caribbean on the International Decade on People of African Descent

2 March 2016, 13:00 – 14:00 Room XXIV,
Palais des Nations, Geneva

Excellencies, Friends, Colleagues,

I am delighted – honoured - to join this event devoted to the Regional Meeting for Latin America and the Caribbean on the International Decade for People of African Descent.

It is also a great pleasure for me to be seated next to Her Excellency Minister Nilma Lino Gomez, who chaired the Regional Meeting, which took place in December last year, in Brasilia. Allow me once again to thank the Government of Brazil for hosting the meeting and in particular for the excellent assistance provided to OHCHR.

As you may know, the Brasilia meeting was the very first regional meeting organised by OHCHR to raise awareness about the International Decade. Representatives of the region’s States, of civil society, international and regional organizations gathered together in honor of the rights of people of African descent.  The meeting identified trends, priorities and obstacles in the promotion and protection those rights while he High Commissioner and Coordinator of the International Decade opened and was present throughout the meeting.  Unfortunately, he is unable to be with us today, but he warmly recalls the conference, particularly his numerous meetings with Afro-descendants from the region.

During that meeting, States of the region shared a number of good practices – including on constitutional protection against discrimination, on affirmative action policies for the equal access to higher education for Afro-descendants, and on laws recognizing the rights of people of African descent over their ancestral lands.

We also heard representatives of the voices of more than 150 million Afro-Latinos and Latinas and Afro-Caribbeans from across the region.

Some of those voices shared their stories - heart-wrenching in their suffering, gut wrenching in their pain.

The journey to manhood of a boy child of African descent is marked even before he is born.  The colour of his skin is allowed to colour his future.  He is more likely to grow up in a household living below the poverty line. He has a higher chance of being subjected to brutal, even lethal, violence, either in his own community or at the hands of security forces, and he runs a higher risk of ending up incarcerated. 

For a girl of African descent her deprivation shaped by the happenstance of pigmentation means she is unlikely to go to a good school and she is far less likely to have a university degree.  She is more likely to drop out of education, to end up in a low-wage job, if any.   Caught in the legacy of enslavement, she is more likely to work in servitude – to be ranked as one of the majority of domestic workers. And she will most often be excluded from influencing policies and programmes that have a direct effect on her life and that of her children – and she is more likely to experience obstacles to her enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The chances that a girl of African descent will reach a position of political power are just negligible. In 2009, a mere 0.3 per cent of legislators across in Latin America were women of African descent. 

This reality that the life of a child is predetermined by the colour of her skin – this is intolerable.

That the life of a child be predetermined simply by where she is born – this is unacceptable. Migrant, refugee or asylum seeker children, whether in a regular or irregular situation, accompanied or unaccompanied, each one is entitled to equal care and protection.

The regional meeting considered these realities, and in response enabled the GRULAC Governments to adopt a strong Declaration, one that clearly reaffirms their commitment to the full implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and the Programme of Activities for the International Decade.

That Declaration supports the creation of the Forum for People of African Descent and the elaboration of a draft UN Declaration on the Rights of People of African Descent – and it calls for work towards this to start as soon as possible. 

But please allow me to highlight some other elements of the pledges that GRULAC Governments made in Brasilia. They committed to:

·   Achieve full political, economic, social and cultural inclusion of people of African descent as equal citizens who enjoy substantive equality of rights.
·   Pay special attention to the children, adolescents, women, older persons, persons with disabilities of African descent and other victims of multiple discrimination.
·   Adopt affirmative action policies in access to education and employment, in order to reduce and remedy inequalities resulting from historical and current injustices and to close these gaps.
·   Promote equal access to justice and effective equality in the judicial systems. 
·   Promote the inclusion of an ethnic variable in national statistical systems in order to ensure visibility of people of African descent and their situation

This is exciting, it is right and it is compassionate and simply just. If States act on those commitments, there is a chance to radically improve social, economic, political prospects for the region’s girls and boys of African descent even by the end of the International Decade.

For whenever and wherever States confront – face up to – the harsh reality that certain groups are discriminated against – that certain peoples are treated unfairly simply by virtue of that with which we all are born – our innate identities – then and only then can States begin to truly tackle inequality, to heal the wounds of toxic social hierarchies and reduce tensions within societies in the interests of inclusion. I urge all regions to follow GRULAC’s example in this regard.

The International Decade for People of African Descent gives Governments and all of us an opportunity to put an end to indifference, neglect and injustice against which afro-descendants struggle each and every day.  It is our opportunity to get beyond business as usual and instead promote greater awareness, understanding, value and respect for achievements of people of African descent and a deeper appreciation for and celebration of their contributions to humanity.

We are at the starting gates of the promise of this Decade. 

It falls to us to begin its urgent work of ensuring that all girls of African descent can grow up empowered by education, protected from harmful gender stereotypes, with access to sexual and reproductive health to arrive as adults in a world of opportunity. It falls to us to work so all boys of African descent can stay in school, survive without violence, thrive without incarceration and arrive in adulthood, with all their creativity, talent and future intact.

It falls to us to build the enabling environments that value and promote her voice and that ensure nothing is denied to him because of his ancestry, her sex or the colour of their skin.

We are the generation that can choose to combat impunity for racism and racial discrimination of the sickening kind that targets all people of African descent.

Please know that you can count on us in OHCHR to be your partner in implementing the Programme of Activities for the Decade, and in raising awareness about it.

We will strengthen our successful fellowship programme for young people of African descent, to contribute to the creation of new generations of leaders of African descent. And rest assured, we will continue exposing the discrimination faced by people of African descent, providing the best possible assistance to Member States on such as the drafting of anti-discrimination legislation or developing equality public policies.  

Some of our publications are here in this room at your disposal.

In an age of austerity, when everyone speaks of scarcity, where no one guarantees prosperity – how can it be that we should tolerate for even one more moment the disgraceful, unconscionable waste of human talent, capability, creativity and contribution that racism provides.

The International Decade is an opportunity not only to end racial discrimination faced by people of Afro-descendants but – by this urgently needed example - to root out racism everywhere and dismantle too its intersecting bigotries of sexism, xenophobia, homophobia – that is the only way in which we can truly advance enjoyment of all human rights by all, and thus lay down the bedrock for peace, stability, the rule of law and true democracy in our societies.

Thank you.